A site about recovering from a stroke

Symptoms

On my stats page there was the search term “symptoms.” Now, this could mean a whole hell of a lot of things and obviously I have no idea what specifically the person who searched that wanted to know. But I’ll write something with the word ‘symptoms’ in mind. All the smart people who know so much about strokes say to look for this stuff to determine if someone might be having a stroke. The acronym FAST. FAST stands for Face, Arms, Speech, Time. In PT school they taught us to look for the 5 D’s and 3 N’s. These are Diplopia, Dizziness, Drop attacks, Dysarthria, Dysphagia, Nausea, Numbness, and Nystagmus. If any of these things appear or in the case of the FAST thing if any of those things are not right, F yeah get that person to a hospital ASAP.

Now, what do you do, as in my case, when the person passes out within minutes and presents to the ER unconscious? Hmm? The doctors had no f’ing clue what was wrong with me. So they didn’t do anything. For 2 days. Dean has a bunch of posts on the necessity of an objective way to diagnose a stroke, I couldn’t choose just one to link to.

So a few days later you find out that a part of your brain is destroyed and you had a stroke. I’ve said this many times before on my blog. You could have had a stroke in the frontal lobe, in the parietal lobe, in the temporal lobe, in the occipital lobe, or in the cerebellum or brain stem. It’s the EFFECTS, the SYMPTOMS of the stroke that will vary greatly. The EFFECTS and what you need to work on is what makes brilliant doctors say one of my favorite phrases “every stroke is different.” The size and location of the stroke will determine the EFFECTS. Everyone understand that? The EFFECTS of a stroke will be unlike anyone else’s, but I have the same issue as anyone else who had a stroke, I have brain damage.

The other parts of the brain that are alive and healthy can take over and be responsible for the duties of the dead part. The cerebrum can take over for the cerebellum and vice versa. This sounds great right? It takes a hell of a lot of work and years. Years. Oh and it takes meditation and breath work.

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Actually it still does. An aneurysm is just a bulge in a blood vessel, if nothing happens you’re ok. A haemorrhage is when that aneurysm bursts and floods your brain with blood. Yours must have burst, which points out that your doctor did not explain your cause properly.

Yep, the effects like Amy said can and will often be unique to ur stroke. My initial symptoms were mild, so much that I ignored the possibility that something was amiss. It was months before I went to the doctors. Finally, upon going they assured me my complaints were post partum depression…. I was 6 months out from having my first baby and couldn’t have been happier…but I felt strange. MRI, which I demanded they order, found a large bleeding cavernous angioma…..”incidental finding” of course. There was nothing fast about my DX or tx…. After all, my symptoms were “all in my head” according to the experts. Arrrr. I was mad as hell. I had symptoms, I knew it, and every doctor insisted I was young, healthy, and crazy. Anyway,symptoms vary. You are ur own expert. I know my body, and I knew something was wrong…..convincing the experts, or rather finding one that actually knew something was the challenge.

They thought I was drunk. Doesn’t help that the toxicology report was wrong and it said my blood alcohol level was 6.0. Not 0.6, it said 6.0. You’d be dead twice if your blood alcohol level was that high. Maybe even 3 or 4 times dead.

For me, my blood sugar bottomed out. I’d been taught stroke leads to high blood sugar spikes. So many of the symptoms are the same between low blood sugar and stroke. I did what any insulin dependent diabetic would do…I ate and waited for my blood sugar to come up wasting precious time. Even in the ER I was denying a stroke because my blood sugar was low. They actually agreed with me until the facial droop started two hours later.

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Disclaimer…

This blog IS NOT intended to be medical advice of any sort. I am writing about my experiences, my knowledge, and my opinions. My goal is to tell people what I'm going through and hopefully help someone.
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All that being said, rest assured that everything you read on this blog is written by a highly educated, highly trained, and highly experienced medical practitioner.
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Dr. Amy Elder (formerly Shissler) PT, DPT, Cert. MDT------my full name and title